In the last couple of weeks, I’ve finished the last 12 hour shifts of my first year of midwifery studies, begun attending the lectures for my second year, and facilitated an international FreeGaza meeting in Brussels in the middle. Also this year so far, I’ve done about 30 book events – and thank you so much to all the groups and people who’ve made those happen. I’ve been posting occasionally to this blog since I returned from Gaza, but I’ve decided it’s time to stop…I need to step up the attention to my degree (it’s getting harder, and I’m not getting smarter!), while keeping going with more book events in my spare moments.

Anyway, for me, the role of my own writing has been much less important since I left Gaza, and I would rather you went and read writing coming out of Palestine right now (look at my links page if you need some contacts to start you off.) I will continue to tell Gaza stories via my book – you can invite me along anywhere you need a random activist-author-midwife type person (so keep an eye on my events calendar which I will keep updating) and one day I will be back here writing again. I don’t really have the words I need to thank all of you – the readers who opened your hearts to my stories of Gaza, when that meant, and continues to mean, a lot of pain and sometimes horror. I hope what you’ve also found here is some of the courage, hope, and joy that my Gaza friends have shared with me.